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Mountains Oceans Giants Manas Beyond Alexanderplatz FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH – TWO ASTONISHING FICTIONAL WORLDS FROM WEIMAR GERMANY MOUNTAINS OCEANS GIANTS (A Dystopia of the 27th Century) and MANAS (A Himalayan Epic in Verse) Translated and introduced by C.D. Godwin April 2020 www.beyond-alexanderplatz.com CONTENTS 1. Why this Introduction? 1 2. Döblin’s life and works 2.1 Alfred Döblin 1878-1957 2 2.2 Döblin’s epic fictions 3 2.3 ‘Happy 140th, Alfred Döblin!’ 4 3. Mountains Oceans Giants [MOG] (1924) 3.1 Alfred Döblin (1941): MOG as a Hollywood film 6 3.2 Gabriele Sander (2013): ‘Afterword’ 13 3.3 Alfred Döblin (1924): ‘Remarks on MOG’ 25 3.4 K. Müller-Salget (1988): Excerpts from Alfred Döblin: Werk and Entwicklung 31 3.5 C.D. Godwin (2019): Why I decided to abridge the English translation 37 4. Manas- a Himalayan Epic (1926) 4.1 C.D. Godwin: The vanished masterpiece 39 4.2 Heinz Graber (1972): On the style of Manas 41 4.2 Four Reviews of Manas – a) Robert Musil (1927) 51 b) Oskar Loerke (1928) 55 c) Axel Eggebrecht (1927) 57 d) W.von Einsiedl (1928) 58 WHY THIS INTRODUCTION? Since his death in 1957, Alfred Döblin’s reputation has grown as one of the 20th century’s great German-language Modernists. A stream of dissertations, monographs reviews and biographies has familiarised German literary journalists and readers with Döblin and his oeuvre, and encouraged the publication of smart new editions (currently the well-curated series from Fischer Klassik). Elsewhere in the world Döblin remains obscure. If known, it is usually for just one title from his vast and varied output: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Of the few discussions of Döblin in English, mostly tucked away in obscure scholarly journals, little has reached the wider community of readers. Since Döblin is not ‘in the air’ in the Anglophone world, his name is hardly known, and his books are almost entirely unknown. Hence an ill- founded presumption that he can safely be ignored, even by sophisticated readers So it was a bold move by Galileo Publishing to acquire the English-language rights two startlingly original epic fictions by Döblin: the sprawling futuristic dystopia Mountains Oceans Giants, and the (gasp!) epic-in-verse Manas. Especially the latter: this wonderful work has, inexplicably, attracted minimal critical attention even in Germany. So, a rare chance for the Anglophone literary world to reveal long-lost treasure! This pamphlet has two tasks – * whet the reader’s appetite: What delights (and challenges) do these books offer? * highlight current German views: Why and how should Döblin be taken seriously? Our evidence: Alfred Döblin’s 1941 pitch to MGM for a film of Mountains Oceans Giants provides a handy overview of the plot structure. His 1924 ‘Remarks on MOG’, made soon after the novel first appeared, explain his motivations and seek to justify controversial issues in its composition. Gabriele Sanders has edited numerous works of German literature. She wrote the only book- length monograph on MOG. Her ‘Afterword’ to the current (2013) German edition highlights the novel’s strengths and weaknesses, the enduring relevance of its themes, and the lively attention it continues to receive from German critics and scholars. Klaus Müller-Salget’s informed and fair-minded discussion of Döblin’s work and development sets the dystopian novel in the context of Döblin’s evolving philosophy of life. Heinz Graber’s 1967 monograph on Manas remains the only substantial critique of this epic. C.D. Godwin’s translation of Döblin’s earliest epic fiction, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, was first published some 30 years ago (2nd edition from NY Review Books 2015). He has translated five Döblin epics so far, as well as numerous essays. His website focuses on the lives and works of Döblin and contemporaries: www.beyond-alexanderplatz.com. 1 ALFRED DÖBLIN 1878-1957 Alfred Döblin was born in Stettin (Pomerania) to a family of assimilated Jews. When Alfred was 10 years old his father, who ran a large-scale tailoring business, absconded to America with a young employee. The family had to move to Berlin, where they depended on not always charitable relatives. Döblin relished the big-city environment, but detested the philistine and militaristic Wilhelmine society. He studied Medicine, qualifying as a doctor with a dissertation on memory loss and fabulation in patients with Korsakov Syndrome. At university he also attended classes in Philosophy. For three decades, until he had to flee into exile in 1933, he regarded Medicine as his primary profession, even as his output of novels, stories, essays, plays, theatre reviews and public lectures grew massively. In 1926 he became a founding member of the Literature Section of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Sciences, alongside Gerhard Hauptmann, Thomas Mann and other leading writers. Although his reputation as a writer grew steadily during the 1920s, he gained widespread public recognition only in 1929 with his big-city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Unfortunately that novel has ever since overshadowed his other substantial contributions to literature. In 1933 he fled from the Nazis first to Zurich, and then to Paris where in 1936 he acquired French citizenship. In 1940 the family had to flee again before the German invasion, ending up in Hollywood until 1945. During a one-year contract with MGM he worked on Random Harvest and Mrs Miniver among other projects, but none of his contributions made it to final editing – sadly, since he had enthusiastically adopted cinematic techniques in his writing since at least Wang Lun (1915). While in Hollywood, he converted to Roman Catholicism. Alfred Döblin returned to Germany in 1945 in the uniform of a French officer, with oversight over cultural affairs in the French zone of occupation. His defeated countrymen showed little interest in revisiting his pre-war writings, or in his current views, and he returned to France in 1953. He died in 1957. Since the 1980s, Döblin has increasingly been recognised in Germany as a major but unjustly neglected figure in 20th century European literature, with a stream of critical reviews, scholarly monographs, and well-curated new editions of his works. 2 DÖBLIN’S MAJOR FICTIONS The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (1915). Set in 18th century China; remarkably avoids almost all trace of Western attitudes and perspectives. In English: 2nd ed., NY Review Books 2015. Wallenstein (1920). Set in the first half of the Thirty Years War (1618-48). Described by one critic as “A magnificent wall-painting by a very near-sighted artist”. Translation, as yet unpublished, at www.beyond-alexanderplatz.com . Mountains Oceans Giants (1924): Dystopia set mainly in the 27th century. Manas (1927). A Himalayan epic in verse, blending Existentialism and Hinduism. Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929). Big-city epic, the only Döblin work at all widely known. New translation by Michael Hofmann: NY Review Books /Penguin Books 2018. Babylonische Wandrung (‘Babylonian Exile’ 1934): the first work written mainly in exile; a picaresque account of Babylonian god Marduk’s progress through 1930s Europe. Land without Death (‘Amazonas Trilogy’ 1937-38): vividly depicts 500 years of Europe’s impact on South America, exposing Eurocentric barbarism’s deep roots. Translation, as yet unpublished, at www.beyond-alexanderplatz.com . November 1918 (1948-49). A massive novel of the upheavals in Germany at the end of the First World War. Translated by John E Woods: Fromm 1983. Tales of a Long Night (1956). Döblin’s last major work. A wounded soldier returns from World War 2 to a dysfunctional family. Translated by R & R Kimber: Fromm 1984. 3 HAPPY 140TH, DOCTOR DÖBLIN! You were born 140 years ago, on 10 August 1878, just a few years after the founding of the German Empire – the first unitary German nation-state. Who could foresee how that world-political event would work out, and affect your next seven decades? A hundred years ago, in August 1918, amid the barbarous misery of the First World War, you were deep in the writing of your second great epic novel: Wallenstein, which would bring to vivid life the follies and barbarism of the Thirty Years War three centuries earlier. How little had humankind learned! Ninety years ago, in 1928, you were admitted into the Literature section of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, alongside Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Oscar Loerke, and other literary luminaries of Left and Right. This was a year before your one best-selling international success: Berlin Alexanderplatz, which ever since has overshadowed all your other works. (But Wang Lun, Wallenstein, the Dystopian Mountains Oceans Giants, the wonderful neglected Manas, not to mention your political polemics and reflections on the writer’s craft, were more than enough to justify your admission to the Parnassian heights of the Academy.) Eighty years ago, in exile in Paris in 1938, you had just published your South American epics, now known under the covering title Amazonas. Deprived by tyranny of almost all your German-reading base, you nevertheless persevered to provide an engrossing work of historical fiction which is also a thought-provoking critique of what Europe has wrought on the world over half a millennium. Fifty years ago, in 1968, a decade after you left this earth, the first uniform edition of your works was well advanced under the editorship of Walter Muschg. (Not all of Muschg’s editorial decisions have fared well in the eyes of later scholarship.) Thirty years ago, by 1988, serious scholars in Germany were coming to grips with your extensive oeuvre, for example collecting your many scattered essays and journalistic pieces, and writing sometimes controversial overviews. (On a personal note, 1988 is the year I discovered Wang Lun, and decided to try my hand at translating it.) This year, 2018, your 140th anniversary, has seen a new English translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz, and the launch of this website, dedicated to bringing your other works to the attention of the English-reading world.
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